Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stampede

Re:Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stam... by jessriedel on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @11:25AM (#16868118)

The thing that is notable about the decline of Venezuela is that it's happening now, when we can make direct observations rather than reconstructing things from the historical records.

If I am betrayed by a friend and say "this is what Caesar must have felt like", I am not saying that my friend's betrayal is the most like that of Caesar's, nor that Caesar's betrayal is the most similar historical betrayal to my mine. It just means "oh, now I know more about what that feels like".

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Re:Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stam... by eesmith on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @01:18PM (#16869105)

Which is a trite comparison for almost all cases.

I lost a glove. What I felt must be like what Luke Skywalker felt when he lost his hand.

I set a PR of 7:15 on running a mile. That must be like what Bannister felt when he broke the 4 minute mile.

But montrose made more than a simple comparison. The implication is that high-level government attempts to control economic policy is what lead to the similarity.

I disagree that assessment, and pointed to other attempts at high-level government control of economic policy, with a variety of results, to show that there isn't a strongly causal connection.

Plus, there are other factors which are involved. Why should we think that the views of Romans in the late Western Roman Empire were similar to what's going on in Venezuela now?

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